


The Ursa Major Affair

by engmaresh



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Gen, Male Friendship, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2015-09-22
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4836215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/pseuds/engmaresh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Has nothing to do with the constellation and everything to do with a huge bear. That Illya wrestles. Because Napoleon once again talked their asses into trouble when he should have been talking them out of it.</p><p> </p><p><i>Prompt:</i><br/>Illya has to wrestle a bear.<br/>Okay so they were on a mission and the bear was about to attack and murder Napoleon, but STILL.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ursa Major Affair

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Дело о большой медведице](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5283956) by [faikit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/faikit/pseuds/faikit)



Napoleon takes another step back as the bear rears up, clawing the bars that are all that separate it from him. On its hind legs it’s almost nine feet tall.

“By the way,” says Illya stonily next to him, “I forgot to thank you for rescuing me from the fortress.” 

“A pleasure,” Napoleon grits out as he once again scans the pit for a way of escape. The ladder has been drawn up behind them and Madam Karim’s soldiers ring the room, rifles at the ready to make sure neither of them try to scale the walls.

The bear roars again, increasingly agitated as it gnashes its teeth and tries gnaw through the bars to get at the intruders in its territory.

“You have thirty seconds, Solo,” commands Madam Karim, “to tell me where the scepter is.”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, my lady,” Napoleon replies, deciding that retreating towards the side furthest from the bear would be the best strategy for now. “It is with currently my associate and who knows what she’s done with it.”

He can’t see her from where he’s standing, but Napoleon has antagonized enough power-hungry old people that he can clearly imagine the angry pucker that sours her face. He smirks to himself, only to catch Illya’s glare and remember that, oh yes, they’re about to be mauled to death by a bear.

Above him, Madam Karim barks orders at her men. “Find that woman! I want that scepter brought to me within the hour!”

“And you!” She leans over the pit, her once handsome face twisted with anger. “I’m sick of you and your pet. I’m going to enjoy watching Teddy tear you apart.”

“Pet?” Illya mouths next to him, a look of bemused outrage crossing his face. Then, “Teddy?” 

They look at Teddy. Teddy looks back and bares its yellowed teeth. 

“Any plans, Peril?” The wall feels far too solid behind his back and it looks like he won’t be able to talk his way out of this one.

“Maybe,” Illya mutters. “Give me your jacket.”

“My what?” he repeats, though his hands automatically fly to the lapels of his dove grey suit jacket, one of his best.

“Jacket,” Illya growls, holding his hand out impatiently for the garment. “Quick.”

Napoleon’s hands hesitate a moment over the buttons, then Illya snaps his fingers and he quickly shrugs out of it. A jacket can be replaced. He doubts even Waverly’s top surgeons will be able to put him together after a bear attack, and it looks like at least Peril has a plan.

He notices then that Illya has edged him away from center so that he’s no longer standing directly across from the bear. And now the crazy Russian does his own best impression of angry Ursidae, lips curling away from his teeth in snarl and a deep growl of his own rumbling from his chest.

“Peril…”

“I distract,” Illya snaps, not taking his eyes off the bear. “You escape." 

Before Napoleon can question the finer details of the plan like how he’s going to escape a pit with fifteen-foot walls surrounded by armed guards, the cage door retracts and the bear lunges at them.

For a split second he’s frozen, starring at the lumbering mass of fur, muscle and murderous rage that headed right for him, then Illya pushes him hard, sending him stumbling out of its path.

The bear turns on Illya, who holds Napoleon’s jacket out like a Toreador with his red cape. The Russian has drawn himself up to his tallest, growls continuing to rumble out of his chest, his eyes never once breaking away from the bear’s animal glare.

It lunges again with a roar and Napoleon yells, instinctively raising his arms over his face and skittering as far as he can. Meanwhile Illya ducks under the bear’s large, dangerous paws and rolls away, leaping to his feet as soon as he’s clear and whipping the jacket at the bear to catch its attention again.

It occurs to Napoleon that he ought to find a way to escape but he can’t tear his eyes away from the scene before him. Besides, Madam Karim’s guards are still hanging around, and placing bets on who the bear will kill first and how long it will take for each of them to die, judging from the few snatches of conversation that penetrate his distracted mind.

Illya and the bear keep circling, and Napoleon is put to mind of those dogs the Russians bred to fight bears. Or of a lion tamer and his whip. Every time the bear’s attention threatens to drift away towards easier prey aka Napoleon, Illya flicks it with the jacket and growls a little louder.

This strategy does not please Madam Karim. “Finish him!” she yells, at the bear or at her men, Napoleon is not sure. But a shot rings out and the bear roars, then ponderously, inexorably, it turns its gaze on Napoleon.

“Stupid bear, look at me!” Illya roars, but the bear seems to have given up on him, its sights set on an easier meal.

The muscles in Napoleon’s legs tense. If dodges, if he gains enough momentum he may be able to make it up the wall—

An assault rifle stutters and a woman screams. The bear, distracted by the noise, looks up – and Illya throws the jacket in its face.

The bear roars, clawing angrily at the offending garment, only to be bowled over onto all fours as the huge and equally angry Russian throws himself onto its back. Napoleon can only gape in astonishment as Illya grabs the two flapping arms of the shredded coat and ties it behind the bear’s head before… trying for an armlock?

He has an arm around the bear’s burly neck, the other holding tight onto its scruff as it lumbers blindly around the pit. Napoleon keeps dodging, dimly aware that some kind of chaos is happening above them outside the pit but too focused on Illya, the bear and not dying to pay it much heed.

The bear rises once more on its hind legs, Illya still clinging to its back. Then it claws at its chest and Illya yells, falls off. The claws have shredded through his right sleeve, right through the skin. Blood drips from his fingers.

The bear rounds on him. What is left of Napoleon’s jacket is still tied around its eyes, hindering its vision, but it’s no longer blinded. Even if it were, it would no longer matter. Illya is hurt. Now it can smell him.

“Hey!” Napoleon yells, smacking his hand against the side of the pit. A little harder than he intended; his hand smarts. But the bear turns away from Illya.

“Napoleon!” Illya growls.

“Hey, Teddy!” Napoleon yells. “Hey, look at me! Why go for the Russian? He’s tough, chewy. Tendons and sinew, that’s all there is to him.”

The bear looks undecided, torn between hurt prey and this noisy new attraction.

“But me,” Napoleon keeps yelling, “100% American. You’ll never find flesh this tender this side of the Atlantic.”

He thumps himself on the chest for good measure.

“Shut up, Solo!” Illya shouts over the growing growls of the bear. It has dropped back to all fours and paces the pit between them. Above them, the chaos has given way to silence.

Napoleon can’t take it anymore. Either way, they’re both going to die. If it kills him first he won’t have to watch Illya get torn apart.

“Come on, you stupid bear!” he shouts, and finally it lunges.

He gets a glimpse of its slobbering maw as it bears down on him, Illya’s stricken face as he once again leaps onto the bear, then he’s slammed back against the wall, hard enough that he hears a _crack!_ that’s probably his head. Stars dance before his eyes, as blue Illya’s and even through the haze he can smell the rotten meat-stench of the bear’s breath.

He waits for the pain, the darkness, but all the world does is go a little blurry around the edges. There’s a vice around his chest. Maybe it’s the bear’s jaw. He can’t breathe.

Something small and dark and not-bear drops down next to him. Napoleon!” it shouts in a high, feminine voice.

“Napoleon!”

He passes out.

 

* * *

 

It must seem that despite his crimes and perversions, he has gone to heaven after all, unless the devil is in the habit of welcoming the doomed with incredibly beautiful – bears?

“Lie back, Mr Solo,” says the not-bear medic, as he struggles to push himself up. “You will only injure yourself further.”

“Illya!”

“Mr Kuryakin is fine,” she tells him. “My colleague is seeing to him." 

She turns away for a moment, and Gaby steps into his line of vision, a beautiful angel clad in U.N.C.L.E. fatigues, radiating spitfire anger like only Gaby can.

“ _Du Vollidiot_ ,” she snarls. “ _Gottverdammter Dummkopf_! What were you thinking? What were the both of you thinking?”

“Didn’t have a choice,” Napoleon mumbles. A throbbing in his skulls starts making itself known and a sharp pain stabs through his chest with each breath he takes. 

“Maybe you could have held off from antagonizing the crazy woman with the pet bear.” She crouches down next to him, and he notices the special U.N.C.L.E. rifle she helped develop slung over her back.

“The bear?”

“I shot it, just as it was about to bite your stupid American head off. What were you thinking?”

“It was going to eat Illya!” he protests, rather feebly since the medic seizes that moment stick a thermometer in his mouth. What for he’s not sure, but he suspects it’s to shut him up.

Gaby sighs. “That _Spinner_  is another one I have to shout at later. Wrestling a bear!”

She stomps to her feet and stalks away, muttering.

The throbbing in his head becoming almost unbearable, Napoleon closes his eyes and decides to go away for a little bit.

 

* * *

  

He wakes up on a plane bound for a hospital in France, lying on a stretcher and covered in a blanket that smells like antiseptic. It’s a welcome change from bear. The throbbing in his skull has lessened to a dull incessant hum and it doesn’t hurt as much to breathe.

The beautiful medic is there, engrossed with checking Illya’s blood pressure. The Russian lies on a stretcher next to him, a drained blood bag hooked up on his left, his right arm heavily swathed with bandages up to the shoulder.

The medic – Sandy Wister, her nametag tells him – looks up and sees him starring. 

“He’s fine,” she tells Napoleon as she lets the air out of the blood pressure cuff. “We had to replace some blood, but he’ll be all right.”

“His arm?”

“Blood loss. It didn’t get the muscle. We just need to watch him for infection.”

Napoleon looks at Illya’s face. It is very pale and very still.

“As for you,” Sandy goes on, walking around Illya’s stretcher to crouch down next to him, “I was going to wake you in a bit. You have a concussion and three broken ribs on account of that bear falling down on you. Good Lord, it was awful going down there. It took three men to get it off you and then we thought it had torn your throat out. And Mr Kuryakin! One of the agents told me he tried to wrestle it, did he really, Mr Solo?”

Illya chooses this moment to wake up, swimming into consciousness with a choked groan that has Sandy hurrying to his stretcher before Napoleon say a word.

“Mr Kuryakin, how are you feeling?”

“Like I fought bear,” Illya groans. His blinks and his blue eyes dart around, taking in his surroundings.

“Where is Napoleon?”

“Right here,” says Napoleon hurriedly before his partner can start rampaging through the plane in search of him. He sticks his hand out from under the blanket and carefully takes Illya’s right hand in his. Illya gives it a squeeze, then slowly turns to bring the full force of his icy gaze on Napoleon. 

“You are fool,” he says slowly, and Napoleon rolls his eyes.

“I’m not the one who wrestled a bear.”

“In Russia—”

“You wrestle bears in your free time?”

“Nyet, but—”

“I’m not the only one who could have gotten killed.”

“ _You_  got us thrown into bear pit in first place.”

“ _You_  got yourself caught first. _I_ got caught trying to rescue you.”

“I told you, I distract, you escape. But you stand there like stupid Ame—”

“All right, that’s enough of it,” Sandy cuts in before the argument escalates any further.

“In medic lingo, you two are fucking stupid idiots” —she pauses a moment to enjoy effect her swearing has on them— “who are lucky to be alive. So now settle down and enjoy your flight or I’ll pump you both so full of morphine you won’t even remember your own names.”

With that little speech, she pulls a book out from under a seat, straps herself in and settles down to read.

Napoleon sucks in a shallow breath and slowly lets it out through his teeth. Next to him, Illya huffs and wriggles around on his stretcher a little, only to agitate his injured arm judging from the sudden squeeze he gives Napoleon’s hand.

Once he’s settled down again, Illya says tonelessly, “Thank you for trying to save me from bear.” 

“You’re welcome.”

“It was a foolish attempt. You sell yourself to bear like you sell cattle.”

He’s clearly still feeling the aftereffect of drugs, because with a rather exaggerated American accent that’s pitched far too high to sound anything like Napoleon's, the usually staid Russia start mimicking his partner. “I am real Cowboy! One hundred percent American! Juicy, tender!”

In the back of the plane Sandy giggles, and Illya’s Napoleon is so ridiculous Napoleon himself can’t help the snort of laughter that escapes him. “Not my most shining moment, I must admit, Peril. But I’m not the one who tried to wrestle a bear.”

“In Russia—”

“You don’t wrestle bears in Russia, don’t give me that.”

“No. But I once wrestle man _like_ bear.” Illya wrinkles his nose. “Smelly too.”

“So who won?” Napoleon can’t help but ask.

A smirk crosses Illya’s face. “I did.”

Napoleon gives Illya’s hand a squeeze. “Of course you did,” he says.

 

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> *Gaby's German is just her calling them several variations of idiotic.
> 
> There is actually an UNCLE episode where Napoleon, Illya and the girl of the week get thrown into a bear pit. So this is sort of the Ritchie remix on that. Villain name, bear and Illya's first line cribbed from that ep.
> 
> Russian translation by faikit available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5283956%20).


End file.
